


Brother, Mine

by mresundance



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Childhood, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-08
Updated: 2012-03-08
Packaged: 2017-11-01 15:57:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mresundance/pseuds/mresundance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>" . . . there was no advantage to mulling over it, nor mourning. He'd work to do."</p><p>Three scenes from young Mycroft's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brother, Mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladymajavader](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ladymajavader).



> With thanks to leanwellback, beccatoria, morelindo,carolyn_claire, sarkka, and sylvaine for research help, and support.

## I.

It was still dark out when Mycroft's papa woke him. 

"You're going to visit Miss Foden down the street," Siger smiled. Mycroft thought the smile looked odd on his face; his papa rarely smiled. 

"It's mummy, isn't it?" Mycroft said as he dressed, despite the fact his papa had told him he only needed to put on his trainers. Though only seven, Mycroft was sure he wasn't going anywhere dressed in only his blue striped jim jams and trainers. 

"She's fine," Siger said, emptying Mycroft's school rucksack, so he could put some clothes in it. Mycroft made a face at that which Siger, who was clearly preoccupied, ignored. 

"She's having that _baby_ ," Mycroft yanked his rucksack from his papa. His parents had been talking about the horrible thing for months now and he wished they would stop. 

Siger smiled again, this time even wider than the first and Mycroft felt a stab of utter hatred for the creature -- not even alive and breathing like he was, technically -- which could make his papa smile like that. Mycroft was only seven; he couldn't read the faint lines of sadness fanning his father's eyes, nor the doubting stoop in his shoulders. Doubt that was different than the uncertainty of a new child. 

All he knew is that his papa smiled even wider now than he had at Mycroft's piano recital this morning, and Mycroft had played the best of all the other children. His mummy had said so; she had kissed him on the head and told him so. He had been so happy he'd forgotten her stomach was wrong. It was all bloated from that _baby_ inside it. 

He'd said it was like a parasite once, but his parents didn't seem to like that. 

Mycroft let his papa take his hand as they walked down the street to Miss Foden's. It was cold, and the moon had set and the starlight was dimming, but the sun had yet to reveal himself. The world was dim and gray, like it was made all of shadow, and his papa's hand was not warm or firm, but cold and damp and shivering. But he squeezed his papa's hand tightly as they arrived at Miss Foden's.

"Let go now, Mycroft," his papa said as Miss Foden tried to take Mycroft in her arms. 

"Oh my dear, you need to let go of your papa's hand. Don't be silly," she said in that foolish, but kind voice of hers. 

I am not being silly, Mycroft wanted to shriek. He was afraid that if he let go, his papa would leave him and go to mummy and the baby. He would never see his papa again. 

"Mycroft, let go," Siger said, voice prickly with annoyance at last, half wrenching his son's fingers from his hand. 

Miss Foden gathered him up before he'd time to protest and took him to her sofa. She wrapped him in a blanket, turned on the telly, and put the kettle on. Mycroft didn't pay attention to the telly, because he generally hated it. Instead he kicked the sofa until Miss Foden told him to stop. 

"Isn't this exciting? You'll have a new brother or sister when you go back home," Miss Foden chirped as she bore a mug of tea to the sofa. 

No, Mycroft wanted to say. It is hardly exciting. 

He thought of his papa, his mummy and -- the baby -- all of them happy together and smiling so wide. They would be so happy they would forgot about Mycroft, leaving him with Miss Foden and her horrible wallpaper.

"Oh dear, look at the mess you've made," Miss Foden said. "Come on let's get you cleaned up. I hope your father gave you an extra pair of trousers and pants."

Mycroft knew he was far too old to wet himself, but it had felt good, like he'd been holding his breath underwater too long and had finally surfaced and could breathe. 

The next morning, Miss Foden took Mycroft home. He was glad, because he had enough of her telly and Miss Foden's chatter. 

Siger was there and scooped his son up in his arms. Mycroft's heart fluttered, because he was yet young enough to be giddily in love with his papa. Siger's smelled of fresh tea leaves and his aftershave and his arms were strong and warm as he carried Mycroft up mummy and daddy's room.

Mummy on her side in bed, long dark hair spilling loose over her shoulders and throat, like seaweed. 

His papa set Mycroft down. 

"You are so pretty mummy," Mycroft blurted out before he could stop himself. She was always pretty, the prettiest of all the mummies and Mycroft knew that for a fact. He loved his mummy, even more fiercely than his papa. 

Both of his parents laughed and Mycroft thought for a moment that his whole baby business was a mistake and nothing was going to change. 

"Mycroft, I want you meet your baby brother. Sherlock," Siger pointed to a lump on the bed in front of mummy. 

Mycroft had seen pictures of babies and seen babies in other families. He didn't think much of this one. It seemed dopey, with those stupidly fat cheeks, eyes shut, a silly patch of black hair on its head, hair black as their mummy's. 

Mycroft was jealous -- why should this baby get mummy's black hair? -- but the baby, Sherlock, turned over and yawned and something in Mycroft turned in the same moment. 

Mycroft didn't like it, so he stormed out and shut himself in his room for the rest of the day, reading books about Napoleon and practicing on his new violin, ignoring his parent's pleas to come out. 

"I hate the baby," he told his mummy through the door at one point. His parents finally left him alone.

## II.

"Where is papa?" Sherlock sat in the windowsill which overlooked the front garden path. The overly sweet scent of magnolia permeated the warm spring afternoon and made Mycroft feel gummy, and tired. He felt like an old, worn out jumper which has been put through the wash too many times. He thought it was a bit unfair he should feel like this; he was only ten after all.

"Gone," Mycroft said, cringing as, upstairs, mummy made her violin shriek again. 

"Where has he gone?" Sherlock asked, not moving and not taking his eyes off the front garden path. 

"I don't know Sherlock," Mycroft said honestly. At first he said it to hurt his baby brother -- what good was he if not to torment? -- but then Mycroft realized that he wanted to be honest with Sherlock too, in a strange way. As if this was the kind of thing which demanded only the upmost honesty, and straightforward answers. At three, Sherlock understood even less than Mycroft did, and this made Mycroft feel oddly protective. And Sherlock was still in love with papa. No matter that papa had been cruel towards Sherlock over the last months, refusing to hold him, to kiss him, often outright ignoring him. 

Last night he had tried to get their papa's attention and show him he could count all the way up to twenty-five without being distracted. Siger had ignored him, even as Sherlock counted, and finally curled up on the floor and began screaming as he clawed at his hair. Mycroft had bundled him away to his room, telling him he was a very good counter. 

"Why won't papa pay heed to me?" Sherlock had said, tears in his eyes. Mycroft had wiped the tears away and held his brother until, exhausted by his tantrum, he'd fallen asleep. He'd been warm and soft against Mycroft's chest, like an overly heavy duvet. In a moment of sentiment, he had even kissed the dark curls atop his brother's head. 

Papa's leaving had to do with Sherlock and Mycroft's hair, Mycroft knew. Or, more correctly, how Sherlock's hair was a riot of serpentine curls and Mycroft's was dull and flat and brown. Both the brothers were angular and long limbed as mummy, their eyes the same mercurial gray, blue or green, depending. Both Mycroft and mummy had the same aquiline nose. But Mycroft's hair was brown and where he didn't look like mummy, he was "the spitting image" of Siger. 

Sherlock was a bit different. Sherlock's lips were full and his nose stubby and his hair curly. He had clinodactyly in his right foot, the fourth toe congenitally curled under the third. No-one in the family shared any of these features, not even grandparents or more distant cousins. Sherlock was the spitting image of no-one, Mycroft thought. And there had been a seven year gap between him and his younger brother, which wasn't unheard of, per se. This was as far as he allowed his inquiries to go though, simply because going any further hurt something inside him and he didn't care to think on it. 

"When is papa returning?" Sherlock asked and he was now leaning into the window, pressing his face into the glass. Upstairs, mummy's violin wailed some erratic variations on Bach.

"Sherlock don't push your face into the glass, you'll dirty it," Mycroft sighed. He sat next to his brother in the windowsill. "Papa doesn't like it."

Sherlock pulled his face off, one pale cheek reddened from the window.

"He's not coming back is he?" Sherlock said, crooking his eyebrow in a manner which was far too aware for a three year old. 

Whenever Mycroft was privy to this alien awareness of Sherlock's, he felt frightened by it. If he had been more aware himself, more mature and developed, he might have said that this awareness of others and situations outside of himself far outstripped Sherlock's awareness of self -- a terrifying prospect. It prophesied nothing but misfortune for the younger boy, if only because he would be constantly ahead of himself, constantly over or underestimating himself, constantly unaware of how much damage he could do to himself -- until it was far too late. 

He didn't know how to respond to Sherlock's question. But it had felt very final; the cold, cruel, silent way mummy and papa had fought after dinner and then the resigned manner in which mummy had secluded herself upstairs with her violin, while Siger had packed his things into a few suitcases, and called a taxi. He'd left his umbrella, but nothing else of any usefulness or value that Mycroft could tell. To Mycroft, it felt as if the final threads in a rope which had been slowly unraveling had finally been severed. 

Sherlock pinched his older brother when he didn't answer. 

"You little brat," Mycroft snarled. "I don't know when papa's returning."

Sherlock looked like Mycroft had just kicked him.

"It's all your fault," he shouted. "Because you're so _wretched_."

Mummy's violin paused and Sherlock began to bawl, face puffing out and turning red. The violining resumed and, for the first time in his life, Mycroft felt altogether abandoned and alone. 

He put his arms around Sherlock, though he knew Sherlock would scratch and bite him. No matter. Mycroft -- who already knew Sherlock better than mummy or papa -- understood what Sherlock's words really meant. 

They were a barb, yes, but even then he only said nasty things to deflect his own hurt. 

"He didn't leave because of you," Mycroft told his brother. 

He wished it wasn't a lie. He repeated it several times, as if repeating it enough would make it true, or truer. But Mycroft knew that was a lie too. 

"Yes he did," Sherlock bawled. 

In that moment, Mycroft's love for his papa transformed into rage; the cold kind without quarter. 

Later that night, Siger called. 

Mummy and her violin had gone silent, though Mycroft had smelled a dark, heady waft of Chateau Margaux. Papa had always disliked it when mummy brought home Chateau Margaux, saying it was "too expensive even for his taste". Mummy had bought another bottle last week, saying that it was for her and papa's anniversary. She had said it with a cheerful determination that told Mycroft she was being optimistic at best. 

Mycroft had put Sherlock to bed, after reading to him from the newspaper. Sherlock thought the books of fairy tales that mummy and grandmum had bought him were dull, and besides, they had read through them all already. Sherlock was fascinated by a recent story involving a possible serial killer, who preyed on young, female secretaries. Mycroft wasn't sure this is what people would consider "normal" or "healthy" bedtime fare for a three year old, but this was Sherlock, after all. 

The phone rung and Mycroft picked it up.

"Good evening. Holmes residence." Before he finished saying the words, he deduced his papa was on the other end of the line.

"Mycroft," Siger said, warmly.

Mycroft said nothing.

"May I speak to your mother?"

"Catherine is indisposed."

He hung up on his father and never heard from him again. 

He felt remorse, but only because he never told his father: "How dare you ever hurt _my_ brother."

## III.

"Mummy! Mummy Holmes! Telephone! Mummy! Mummy!"

The catcalls echoed through Cotton Hall House, haranguing Mycroft as he entered the common room. 

"That's enough boys," Mr. Lewis called from the kitchen -- probably where he was brewing a late afternoon cup of tea, as was his custom -- and the whole house fell silent again. 

Mycroft took the phone and ignored the faces and gestures the older boys were making. His thirteen year old fingers, beginning to lose their baby fat, had the very visceral need to close around his younger brother's throat. He had thought that being away at Eton he could also be away from Sherlock and their mother. Mycroft received so many phone calls from Sherlock in the first month that the older boys in his house had hung a pink, rose patterned apron on the doorknob of his room and his nickname had become "Mummy". It wasn't the worst way to start his school career at Eton, Mycroft supposed. Other boys had been dangled from their bedroom windows by their ankles in nothing but their pants, apparently. And Mycroft was keeping track of who the perpetrators were, filing that away for the future. But it wasn't exactly dignifying for a thirteen year old boy whose voice was breaking, body shifting beneath him in new, exciting and bizarre ways. It was hard enough to know how all this would coalesce into a young man, much less, how this would coalesce into a young man with _Sherlock_ ever in tow. 

"What do you want Sherlock?" Mycroft, a little more sharply than he usually would. He had been trying to study chemistry so he would have more time to practice on his violin in the evening. 

On the other end, there was a snuffling sound that Mycroft couldn't identify for a moment. When he did, he felt cold. Sherlock was crying. Sherlock stopped crying after papa left. Mycroft wasn't sure why, but he guessed it was because Sherlock understood that crying about something could not change what made a situation hurtful in the first place. Crying was futile in that regard. 

"What is it? Sherlock? Is it Mother?" Mycroft asked, forgetting his schoolfellows were in earshot. He ignored as their chortling went on. Mr. Lewis, tea in hand, entered from the kitchen and shushed the boys with a look.

"No. I fell and broke my arm," Sherlock said. 

"Did the bone break the skin?" Mycroft asked, fearing an infection. The boys in the common room went still and quiet and Mr. Lewis pursed his lips.

"No, but it _hurts_. I thought it was just a bruise, but it hurts --"

"Oh Sherlock," Mycroft said. "Why didn't you tell Mother?"

"I did but she won't get out of bed. Please Mycroft," Sherlock was crying again. "Please."

"Fine. Fine. It will be all right. I'm coming. Just stay where you are and don't move your arm."

Mycroft hung up and sighed. 

"Is everything all right Mycroft?" Mr. Lewis put his tea cup down and asked in a quiet tone, which told the other boys this conversation was between him and Mycroft only. 

"Sir," Mycroft looked at his feet and felt the tears in his own eyes. 

"Let's go sit in my study," Mr. Lewis looped his arm around Mycroft's shoulders.

"Sir, it's my brother. He's broken his arm. I have to go to London and take him to a doctor," Mycroft said as Mr. Lewis lead him out of the common room.

"It's that urgent, is it?"

"Yes sir."

"Is he in danger?" 

"I don't think so sir. Just hurt."

By now they had entered Mr. Lewis' study, a warm, dark room suffused with the smell of old books, cigars, aged oak, and a spicy hint of the whisky that Mr. Lewis kept in a locked desk drawer. Mycroft had first entered this room and encountered that smell at the start of term, when Mr. Lewis had a conference with each of his boys. It was embarrassing, but some nights Mycroft wished his duvet and sheets would smell like Mr. Lewis' study and he could fall asleep wrapped in that rich, comforting smell. Mr. Lewis was like that smell, too, in his way, and there was a hardness, like bedrock, beneath his serene surface. Mycroft had seen the Head Master agree with Mr. Lewis, simply so he would not have to disagree with Mr. Lewis. All the while, Mr. Lewis had smiled as if they were only talking about the most agreeable things in existence. There was a skill to that and Mycroft wished he could master it. He wondered if such a skill would help him in steering Sherlock. 

"What about your mother?"

Mycroft thought carefully about this. Though he trusted Mr. Lewis, if Mycroft said certain things, he knew Mr. Lewis was obligated to report them. 

"She is . . . not well herself, sir. Sick," he said. And it was a form of the truth, he supposed. 

Mr. Lewis studied Mycroft, obviously trying to decide if that was enough of the truth. 

"She is bedridden," Mycroft added, hoping that wasn't too much information. 

"She can't take him," Mr. Lewis said. A statement.

"No sir."

Something in Mr. Lewis' posture and features gave, softening ever so slightly. 

"Well then, I suppose there is nothing to be done. You can have permission to leave, but you must be back by chapel on Monday morning."

"Yes sir."

"Should I call a taxi to take you to the train station?"

Mycroft wanted to throw his arms around him. 

"Yes sir."

"You'd best go pack an overnight rucksack," Mr. Lewis picked up his phone and began dialing. 

Mycroft returned to his room and packed some of his casual attire. A few of the other boys knocked or stopped by to ask him what was happening and tell him they were sorry about his brother.

"Don't be. He's a brat," Mycroft said at one point, and felt immediately guilty. The pall of it hung over him on his trains into London, in the taxi from Paddington Street Station, up the short flight of stairs to his family's home. He told the taxi to wait in the front -- he would only be a minute. 

Gray brick and white trim and Georgian architecture, mother had bought the house after papa left, after selling their first house. He remembered how vivid she had seemed at that time in her life, her lips red and burning without lipstick, her eyes -- the same mercurial color as both of her sons -- incandescent; her black hair falling all around her slender, pale shoulders and throat in dramatic tresses. 

"We're going to start all over again," she had said, throwing open doors, gliding from room to room like a great, frenetic tidal wave, gesturing at empty windows and rooms and asking her boys how they should decorate their new house. 

"It will be just the three of us," she'd said, clasping Sherlock in her arms and kissing him on the temple. He hadn't even squirmed the way he usually would; it had been all right, that day, for mother to treat him like a baby, just a little. Because they had all been so sad and so angry about papa leaving. It felt like a relief -- like something approaching _normal_.

Mycroft grimaced at the idea now. 

"Sherlock?" he said and his voice echoed back to him from a dim and empty house. The curtains in all the rooms were shut, the drawing room locked, but the pantry unlocked. As he passed, Mycroft noticed the number of new spaces in mother's wine rack. 

Up the dark, winding staircase, then down a dark hallway, past mummy's soundless and shut bedroom. He wondered how bad it was this time. He wondered when the last time she had taken a full meal was, or risen from bed to bathe. Was it unbearable to even sit up? To touch her violin? To even turn on the radio and flick idly through the stations? She had never explained it to him, but it seemed like when she entered these "wintering" phases, as she called them, that everything felt like so lifeless that even beautiful sounds and bright colors were too much, and experiencing winter was more akin to putting one's hand in a pot of scalding water. It wasn't her fault, either, Mycroft felt, though mother would punish herself for wintering, after it had ended. 

"I'm a terrible mother," she had said over and over again. The last time sitting at their kitchen table, drinking her first cup of coffee after four months of wintering. Mycroft had been so relieved, so _happy_ that she had made it out of bed, much less that there was a splash of pink in her ashen cheeks. 

"I'm a terrible mother," she'd repeated, shaking her head from side to side as if she had a headache she could not just dislodge. "My children must hate me," she'd said. Mycroft had wanted to say _no, no, we could never hate you_ , but he was thirteen and becoming a young man and he knew better than to lie to his mother by then, not matter how well intended it would have been. 

"Sherlock?" Mycroft asked as he nudged his brother's bedroom door open.

"Mycroft," Sherlock said, voicing coming out weak and pained, his small, angular face whiter than usual, deep purple shadows of exhaustion ringing his eyes. He lay limp in bed, feet propped on pillows, arm slung across his chest in a makeshift sling made of rolled newspapers and medical tape. It almost made Mycroft laugh; the idea of a six year old diagnosing and treating his fracture was absurd, but this was Sherlock.

"Oh little brother," Mycroft said, taking Sherlock carefully in his arms. "What happened?"

Sherlock was too hurt and weary to even give Mycroft the _isn't it obvious?_ eyeroll. 

"Joe. Lowry," he said as Mycroft half carried him from the bed and downstairs. "I wanted to see -- a bird's nest -- in a tree," Sherlock's voice so small and dazed and distant it frightened Mycroft. His little brother sounded just like mother, when she was depressed and had had a few bottles of wine. "Joe. Was an idiot. And pushed me out of the tree."

Mycroft grinned as he bore Sherlock into the back of the waiting taxi.

"Charing Cross Hospital," he said. And then, to Sherlock: "What did you do or say to incense Joe so?"

Sherlock tilted his head and made a face. 

"I _am_ the victim here," he sniffed. 

Mycroft chuckled. Sherlock, half curled in Mycroft's lap, arm still slung across his chest, smiled at his brother, the expression souring as the taxi lurched forward. 

The taxi ride was too long and too painful, as was the wait in the emergency unit. 

The nurses eyeballed the boys with curiosity and suspicion. Sherlock and Mycroft knew that as soon as Sherlock was tended to, they would have to -- as the vulgar expression went -- bugger out as quickly as possible. 

At last another nurse and a doctor Sherlock away to X-ray his arm.

"Just a fracture," the doctor explained. "We'll get him all sorted and he'll be right as rain, won't you?" he reached out to bump Sherlock's pointed chin with a curled finger, as if Sherlock were an adorable little tyke. Sherlock and Mycroft stared at the doctor as if he had possibly gone mad. 

The doctor had the nurse put an IV in Sherlock's good arm, and an anaesthetist administered the medicine itself. The doctor allowed Mycroft to hold Sherlock's hand during the process. Though Sherlock grumbled that he wasn't a baby, he still clasped Mycroft's hand tightly. As the anesthesia took effect, his grip slackened, his little body relaxing, eyes drooping, until he looked like he was sleeping. Except he was so still and so pale; he looked _dead_. Mycroft felt like vomiting as the doctor set and cast his brother's arm. Mycroft shut his eyes and prayed for the second to last time in his life:

_Please I never want to see him like this again._

He knew, as with all form of prayer or pleading, that it was futile. But it made him feel a little better nonetheless. 

Sherlock began to regain consciousness a little while later. They escaped while the doctor was "checking paperwork". Mycroft suspected he was calling authorities of some kind and thus decided it was time to leave, half steering, half carrying a wobbling, drooping, half drugged Sherlock out a back entryway. Outside, the sky was pitch and the colorful lights of London seemed soft and mild, by contrast to the draining, bleaching hospital light as Mycroft tried to hail a cab. He declined a few, wherein the driver seemed to pay a little too much attention to them, before finding one which registered as indifferent enough to take them home. 

"Well that was tedious," Sherlock said when they had returned home, allowing Mycroft to tuck him into bed. 

"I'm glad you think so," Mycroft said, carefully propping his brother's newly cast arm with a few pillows. "There."

Mycroft pivoted on his heels and felt like he was going to disintegrate into dust fine fragments. 

"You look weary," Sherlock said. 

Mycroft rolled his eyes and reframed from spouting something inane like _No shit Sherlock._

"I wonder how that could be," Mycroft said, tucking himself into bed next to his brother. Mycroft still wore everything but his shoes, but at that point was too tired to care. 

"Your brother," Sherlock replied, too tired himself for the comment to be all that self-effacing.

"Mmm," Mycroft agreed. 

He slept through half of the next morning, long after Sherlock had risen. Mycroft would have continued sleeping had Sherlock not woken him to ask something about magnesium and chemical reactions. 

"Why?" Mycroft rubbed his eyes. 

"No reason," Sherlock feigned an innocent look. Mycroft contemplated breaking his brother's other arm for a second. 

Instead, he made them both brunch and ignored the unbroken silence from their mother's room. Mycroft asked about Joe Lowry again -- specifically if Sherlock knew where he lived. Sherlock told him, and, wiping jam from his lower lip with his good hand, asked: "Why Mycroft?"

"No reason," Mycroft said smoothly. He collected their plates and utensils and put them in the dishwasher. "I should just like to thank him for all the trouble he's caused." He smiled.

Sherlock's eyes glinted like little daggers. Mycroft bore that look back with him to Windsor and Eton, as well as the residue of his exhaustion. He had barely stepped over the threshold of Cotton Hall House before the cacophony of fifty boys living one on top of another crowded him. It was Sunday afternoon and boys were all but clambering from the eves of the house; boys perched on the furniture in the sitting room, having loud chess battles and almost spilling tea; boys in the garden reading books and splitting grass to make whistles; he passed Roger down the hall, door ajar just enough to see him in bed, fist moving furiously beneath his sheets; and then another door open and a wild knot of limbs wrangling for a tie to shouts of: "Let go, let go you tosser!" William playing his clarinet atrociously and Mycroft sagged into the door of his own room and let the warmth and noise and bustle of the house buoy him a bit. 

"Glad to see you back," Mr. Lewis popped his head in later. "Is everything all right at home?"

"Yes sir," Mycroft didn't look up from his chemistry books. 

"Are you sure you don't want to come down to the sitting room for some Sunday evening telly? _Antiques Roadshow_ is going to be absolutely thrilling."

Mycroft smiled -- a real smile -- and looked up from his books. "No sir. I've work to catch up on."

It seemed to Mycroft that Mr. Lewis seemed very sad for some reason, a reason that Mycroft could not pinpoint as Mr. Lewis nodded and replied, "You're ever the responsible young man, Mycroft." 

Mycroft listened to Mr. Lewis' dapper tread recede down the hall and felt like objecting, "I'm thirteen, sir, and not a man yet."

But then he understood, in part, why Mr. Lewis had seemed so very sad. 

He put the realization away quickly though, simply because there was no advantage to mulling over it, nor mourning. He'd work to do, whether it was schoolwork or Sherlock or their mother.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally intended to be longer, so if it feels abrupt, that is why. 
> 
> My head!canon is convinced Catherine Holmes (mummy) is manic-depressive. She doesn't get much of a chance to shine in this, nor to become more complex. I personally think she is a rich, lively person and probably loads of fun to hang out with, but the way she is written now she is really only a figure of pity and tragedy.


End file.
